Two city agencies have come down harshly on the current Village Griffintown project, as it proposes to demolish or alter several listed heritage buildings, and because the project was never submitted for a proper series of public consultations, as is required by the City code. The modifications to the area proposed by Devimco “puts Montreal’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage site” at risk, says a memo obtained by La Presse.

The agencies’ misgivings were submitted to the project committee before Christmas, but were never made public. The head of Montreal 2025 and a member of the city’s Executive Committee, Alan deSousa, says that all of their input was incorporated into a modified plan that reduced commercial space, but says “there’s no question of bringing this to the OCPM (Office des consultations publiques de Montréal).” Instead, the Sud-Ouest borough will be holding hearings at its public meetings, under the Programme particulier d’urbanisme banner.

Speaking personally, I find the lack of a truly transparent public consultation process to be a sign that the city doesn’t intend to listen to its citizens. The local-borough meeting process is really less than informative: you have to email someone to get them to add you to a mailing list (nope, no web-based signup links or anything).

The list periodically sends you a Word document (!) which lists upcoming meeting topics, most of which are written in appalling bureaucratese and which often make reference to case numbers instead of the name of the project. So far I don’t think they’ve done any meetings on Village Griffintown, but they’re supposed to have at least a few before April — when I get the information I’ll repost it here.